Harrison Smith’s love of the game is showing

As the All-Pro safety enters his potential final two games at US Bank Stadium, a look at what drove him to excellence for all these years -- the love of football

Photo courtesy Minnesota Vikings

---

By Matthew Coller

EAGAN/MINNEAPOLIS — If you freeze the All-22 tape just before Marcus Mariota releases the football in the direction of wide receiver Terry McLaurin, you will notice that Harrison Smith is already en route to the spot where the ball is headed. Even if you weren’t told the result, you would already know that as soon as you unpause, Smith was going to intercept the pass.

Indeed, Smith nabbed the 38th interception of his career. Since he entered the NFL in 2012, nobody has more picks. The guys in his ballpark include Tyrann Mathieu, Richard Sherman, Patrick Peterson and Stephon Gilmore.

Sure, it’s old hat by now for Smith to be two steps ahead of a quarterback and steal the ball away. But there was something a little different about this one. After the six-time Pro Bowler was taken to the ground by the Washington Commanders, he popped up with a huge grin on his face. He kept smiling all the way back to the sideline as his teammates surrounded him.

“Oh, man, he was so elated for that,” said special teams coordinator Matt Daniels, who also coaches the team on turnovers. “I’m so happy for him. I think he was trying to hide his excitement just a little bit about it. But you could just see it all over his face, just a joy.”

For anybody else, that would be normal. In fact, defensive coordinator Brian Flores tells his players that he wants them to celebrate after big plays because they work hard to get those splash plays and defensive backs tend to celebrate QB throwaways like it’s their 21st birthday. But Smith has always been different. He expects to pick off passes, so we rarely see him jump around after he gets one. Outside of “Too Tall” Jones, there has never been a more apt nickname for an NFL player than “Hitman” for Smith. On the football field, he looks icy cold and calculated. Always in control.

Smith is so grounded that in the locker room following the Minneapolis Miracle, while teammates were hugging and crying, he had a straight face and told reporters that they needed to get over it quickly and start preparing for the next game.

Over the last two years, Smith’s shell has started to crack. When the Vikings were eliminated from the playoffs in 2024, FOX 9’s Dawn Mitchell asked him about his teammates and — for the first time in Harry history — he got choked up talking about how much players like Josh Metellus and Cam Bynum meant to him.

Something similar happened in the locker room following the 31-0 victory over the Commanders at US Bank Stadium.

During the week, head coach Kevin O’Connell’s message to the team was about remembering joy in the game, even if the team isn’t playing for postseason position as they expected to be when the season began.

“KO’s message was, ‘what would your high school self think about playing today?’ I think that hit home with a lot of guys. You get a chance to play in the NFL, it’s fun. So make it fun,” Smith said, voice cracking. “I’ve been playing football a long time.”

He didn’t have to say the rest. He’s not going to be playing football much longer. An interception hits different when you’re not sure you’ll ever get another one.

What these little moments have allowed Vikings fans to see is something that Smith’s teammates and coaches have known for a long time: His deep love for football has driven him to greatness, and to a point way beyond where most players walk away.

‘He likes to have fun’

Before the matchup with the Commanders, former Viking Anthony Barr found himself in a place he’d never been inside US Bank Stadium: All the way at the top.

He was there to perform the ceremonial pregame blowing of the gjallarhorn. When the public address announcer introduced Barr and the cameras focused on him, the 6-foot-5 ex-linebacker was not wearing his typical No. 55. Instead he was wearing Smith’s 22.

“Who else’s jersey would I wear?” Barr told Purple Insider over the phone. “It was a little more special because we spent so much time playing together.”

There aren’t many people roaming the earth that know the true Harrison Smith. Barr happens to be one of them. When Barr arrived as the Vikings’ first-round pick in 2014, his locker was placed next to Smith, who was a first-rounder in 2012.

For the first season that they were together, Smith wasn’t very talkative and Barr was too reserved to break the ice.

“I don’t think I spoke to him in the first eight months,” Barr said laughing. “That’s a little of my personality. I showed up and didn’t really know anybody and I was wide-eyed and anxious trying to earn my keep and earn the respect of my teammates and the way I did that was keeping to myself and doing my job.”

But as they spent more time next to each other, Barr and Smith started to bond. Over the years, they went through a lot. The NFC Championship game in 2017. The rise and fall of Mike Zimmer. A pandemic. Pro Bowls. Contract extensions. Growing from young players into men.

“When you sit next to somebody every day for eight or nine years, you grow closer,” Barr said. “I think you see a different side of guys when you peel back the layers and they let their guard down and become a little more vulnerable and you can have conversations that aren’t just about football but about life in general and you realize there’s a lot more commonalities than there are differences.”

They discovered along the way that they had similar upbringings and saw the world in a lot of the same ways. And even though Barr said that much of their conversations were about life, they are two of the highest football IQ players that you will ever run across. Real recognizes real.

When Barr explains Smith’s love for football, it sounds complicated and simple at the same time. There’s a deep intellectual nature to it that sounds like Harry should have been a scientist or archeologist rather than a football player.

“I think it’s a more cerebral type love,” Barr said. “In terms of the game, he looks at it from a macro perspective. He watches all the games, he knows every player, he’s very in tune with the game itself. He loves the preparation part. He loves being able to figure out how to stop somebody.”

Barr continued…

“He loves the complexity of the scheme and the gameplan coming together each week. How are we going to stop somebody? How are we going to film prep? What’s our focus this week? He’s able to shift his mindset from week to week to adapt to whatever the scheme calls for.”

Yet as much as No. 22 is like a kid at an arcade during the week as he tries to solve the next boss, a major force behind his longevity and success is the back yard element. He doesn’t always display it the way he did after the INT against the Commanders but it’s always been there.

“He likes to have fun, which is probably the part that has allowed him to play for so long,” Barr said. “He finds joy in the game itself. The actual sport, going out there and throwing on the helmet and the simple act of just playing football.”

The fact that the NFL has never jaded Smith despite all the ups and downs through the years is probably why that message from O’Connell clicked on a level for Smith that might be different than other players.

Barr saw the video going around Vikings social media. He smiled when he saw it.

“You saw that emotion that he showed during that interview, that’s who he is as a person through it all that might not shine through when he has his guard up,” Barr said.

‘You’re never going to be able to replicate that’

Never meet your heroes? That’s bogus. Blake Cashman is sure thrilled that he got to meet Harrison Smith.

Cashman, a native of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, and former Minnesota Gopher, was in high school when Smith first emerged as a star for the Vikings. He was in college when Smith turned into an All-Pro. He was with the Jets and Texans as Smith went through the latter stages of his career and then in 2024 Cashman finally got to share the field with one of the all-time greatest Vikings.

“It’s been a great it’s a privilege, honestly,” Cashman told Purple Insider. “When you get the opportunity to play with a future Hall of Famer, there’s so much you can learn from that individual. And that’s not even just on the field. That’s how they’re approaching outlook on life and relationships and everything. He’s a guy that, even off the field, our relationship has grown and he’s somebody I would consider a friend for life.”

Cashman and Smith are birds of a feather, just like with Smith and Barr. They are freaks about game planning and schemes and scouting reports and reading keys and all that. But the experience is quite different. When Barr and Smith were playing together, they were ascending young fellas starting their journeys in the NFL. Cashman is 29, so he’s been around long enough to have seen a little different version of the NFL from years ago but young enough to appreciate Smith’s wisdom being seven years his senior.

“Harry’s one of those guys to me, he’s got an old soul,” Cashman said. “It’s nice to have a guy like that in the locker room.”

Where that old soul makes the most difference is with players that haven’t been around the block. The reason that Smith feels so connected to Metellus and Bynum is that he was in the room with them as they emerged from Day 3 picks to guys who make millions of dollars. Cashman said that Smith has enjoyed being part of those journeys.

“It seems like he’s at a point right now where he just has a great appreciation for the relationships of what the game gives you,” Cashman said. “From what I’ve seen I’ve been here, him being a mentor, there’s just a joy he gets from seeing the development of his teammates, not just physically or fundamentally, but mentally as well.”

Seeing this version of Smith is a pretty cool motif for Cashman. It’s like joining a team with a 20-year veteran baseball pitcher and watching him coax strikeouts out of gifted young players by sheer will and savvy. The veteran linebacker knows what he’s witnessing is special.

“Knowing that his football journey is near its end, his appreciation is for game day, that you’re never going to be able to replicate that ever again in your life,” Cashman.

Vikings captain offensive lineman Brian O’Neill has always had Smith on the other side of the locker room. When O’Neill arrived in 2018, Hitman was in his prime, coming off one of the best defensive back seasons in team history. What O’Neill learned quickly was that leadership in the NFL doesn’t always have to come in cinematic soliloquy form.

“I think the most effective way anybody can be a leader is by being the same guy every day and doing things for the right reasons and being about the right stuff and nobody exemplifies that more than him,” O’Neill told Purple Insider.

Only football players who have played for a really long time like O’Neill truly understand how tough it is to have longevity in the NFL. It takes so much work to prepare physically and mentally for a 17-game season. It takes so much time to recover from the car crash of games to play the following Sunday. Since 2000, there are only 17 defensive backs who have started more than 17 games past the age of 35. The names on that list include all-time warriors of the position like Brian Dawkins, John Lynch and Ronde Barber.

“To be able to get up and put the pads on them and go out and practice hard on a Thursday in Week 15 of your 14th season, you don’t do it unless you have a real appreciation for the game and all the people that you’ve played with and the kind of memories and milestones you’ve made along the way. You don’t do that unless you absolutely love it,” O’Neill said.

As an X’s and O’s junkie himself, O’Neill is always impressed by the way Smith can apply his history of seeing different schemes, formations, motions, general trickeration etc. to his game. But what he respects the most about Smith is where the motivation to know all that stuff comes from.

“I’ve heard this saying before and I think it applies to Harry really well: He loves playing football, not just being a football player,” O’Neill said. “There’s a lot of things that come with being an NFL football player, but the most important thing to him and probably why he’s still doing it is he loves playing football. And not everybody’s like that.”

Another guy who is like that is Aaron Jones. Talk about kindred spirits.

Jones remembered early in his career when he first realized that pass blocking was pretty important in the NFL: When he got trucked by Smith on a blitz. Better bulk up and figure out the proper technique because this league is different. Jones went around asking other running backs how they did it. He appreciated Smith’s deception and violence.

“The other day we were sitting in the sauna and I thanked him for that play because I was like, ‘that’s when it kicked into me like, hey…I don’t like that feeling of being put on my back,’” Jones said.

While he was in Green Bay, the Vikings and Packers had some moments. In 2017 the Vikings clinched the division courtesy of two Smith interceptions. In 2019, Jones returned the favor with over 200 all-purpose yards in a December Packers victory to take the North.

“I told him through the years our battles, it made me a lot better,” Jones said. “And he was kind of a measuring stick for me. Like, I’m playing him two times a year, and this is in my eyes, a Hall of Fame guy, All-Pro, Pro Bowler.”

When he signed with the Vikings, they put his locker two spots down from Smith. What do you think Jones wanted to do first? Of course, talk ball.

“Just being able to pick his brain about the game, what he sees from the opposite side,” Jones said, adding that he keeps prodding Smith about coming back next season. “It’s crazy how time goes on and you become teammates and you get to share that.”

‘I don’t take a single [moment] for granted’

Vikings free safety Harrison Smith (22) warms up before a game against the Chicago Bears at U.S. Bank Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Brad Rempel-Imagn Images

Nobody quite understands Harrison Smith’s love for football like his coaches. Head coach Kevin O’Connell and defensive coordinator Brian Flores have both formed bonds with Smith in different ways.

O’Connell has coffee with Smith every Friday.

“He’s got such a unique perspective that sometimes, as you wade through the waters of a season, it might be something that I’m thinking about but maybe not necessarily connecting the dots the way he can from his perspective as a player and a captain and a guy that has led in his way,” O’Connell said.

Being a former player, the Vikings HC can truly appreciate the challenges of the NFL and the rarity of what he has witnessed from No. 22 over the last four seasons.

“I don’t take a single [moment] for granted,” O’Connell said. “Not just where he’s at in his career, but he makes me a better coach. He makes me have a unique connection to this team through a guy that’s seen and done basically everything in this league you can possibly do. Winning teams, teams that have had to endure through struggle, all the different kinds of teammates, and he still finds a way to relate at this point in his career to even the youngest guy in the locker room. So, he means the absolute world to me.”

One of the reasons that Smith returned in 2025 was that he has connected on a unique level with Flores.

Last week, Flores explained that Smith has turned into a defensive coordinator on the field with total autonomy to make coverage calls as he sees fit.

“Every play caller has tendencies…and I’m constantly trying to break those tendencies and when you have a player [Smith] who can go out there and make checks or make calls, it’s like having another play caller out there,” Flores explained. “Where you can have my tendencies, but you don’t have [Smith’s]. That’s an added kind of layer… it’s something that I think is pretty cool.”

Flores said that he’s only been around a small number of players who he would trust to take on that type of responsibility. One of the results of the DC and the veteran safety orchestrating the defense together is many hours of conversation about the scheme, gameplans and how to best utilize different players’ skills.

“Dialogue…is a big part of it,” Flores said. “I think you can have an idea but when Harry comes in and says, ‘I don’t know if that’s gonna work with that player, that player and that player…’ it’s time, it’s conversation, it’s relationships. It doesn’t happen overnight.”

Flores and Smith click on an X’s and O’s level like few humans possibly could. We’re talking like a Charlie Parker and Miles Davis type of thing. But similar to great musicians jamming, it’s passion that drives the connection as much as skill.

“His love for the game is at the top of the list as far as the things he brings to the team, to the game, to the the organization,” Flores said. “I know just early on he fell in love with the game and not just the glitz and glamour of the game, but the grind. Because that’s what this is…people don’t see what you’re doing in the off-season, people don’t see what you’re doing behind the curtain.”

‘I think he’s one of the greatest players to ever play’

Everyone who has been around to witness Smith’s excellence — fans, coaches, teammates, media — understands the privilege they have had. Players like this don’t just come around every day. He lives in rare air. And because of that, most folks who talk about Smith these days want to discuss his chances at eventually reaching the Hall of Fame.

“I might be a little biased but I believe he deserves to be a Hall of Famer and Vikings Ring of Honor member,” Anthony Barr said.

Two years ago, I wrote about Smith’s candidacy, which could be greatly enhanced if the voters begin recognizing advanced statistics like PFF grade and QB pressures, but his is also not the type of career that you can properly capture through numbers because of the impact he has on the field from a communication standpoint. One of the things that I learned in writing that piece was how difficult it is for defensive backs to get into the Hall.

It took Packers legend LeRoy Butler, a comparable for Smith, until 2022 to get the knock at his door and he was part of a team that won the Super Bowl and reached another. That will ultimately be part of the uphill battle that Smith will face. He didn’t get the TV time of a Troy Polamalu during the postseason.

Maybe there is something just right about Smith being a IYKYK (if you know, you know) guy.

“There’s an NFL legacy where you think of strictly football but when you think of his Vikings legacy you think of Harrison in the building and what he means to the organization and how he’s able to effect the culture,” Barr said. “When he speaks, people listen. He demands respect. At the end of the day, I think he’s one of the greatest players to ever play.”

There will be plenty of time to campaign for Smith in the years to come. For now, there are two more opportunities for Harrison Smith to run out of the tunnel this season. They might be the last two times that he ever steps onto an NFL field in uniform.

If that’s the case, it’s been a career driven by loving football in ways that few others could ever comprehend.

And if not, well, who would be surprised?

---